Frames from Fiction: Tim Walker’s Fantasies

Researching images for this week’s fiction story, “The Erlking,” by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, I imagined the fantasy world a young girl inhabits. Tim Walker’s image “The Dress Lamp Tree, England” (2002) opens the story. The ethereal quality of the dresses, the luminous lighting, and the surreality of dresses hanging in a tree seem to embody this magical world. I was happy to hear from Walker that this is one of his favorite photographs. His 2008 monograph, “Pictures,” gives insight into the inspiration and intense process behind the creation of these spectacular photographs. Below is a selection of other favorites that have a strong fantasy element, along with quotes from the book.

Walker’s inspiration for this image, which was originally photographed for L’Uomo Vogue, came from seeing ball dresses hanging from the ceiling in a vintage shop in Bath. “In the winter the lights would glow through them,” he writes. To capture this image required “a still night at Eglingham, and it was perfectly calm. If they had moved they would have been ghosts on the film.”